The decade of the 1980s in Western cinema saw the return of studio-driven pictures, coming from the filmmaker-driven New Hollywood era of the 1970s. The period was when "high concept" films gained popularity, where films were expected to be easily marketable and understandable. Therefore, they had short cinematic plots that could be summarized in one or two sentences. The modern Hollywood blockbuster is the most popular film format from the 1980s. Producer Don Simpson is usually credited with the creation of the high-concept picture of the modern Hollywood blockbuster.
Trends
The films of the 1980s covered many genres, with hybrids crossing between multiple genres. The trend strengthened towards creating ever-larger blockbuster films, which earned more in their opening weeks than any previous film, due in part to staging releases when there is less competition for audience interest. Action: In the 1970s, action films usually focused on maverick police officers. However, the genre did not become dominant in Hollywood until the 1980s, when it was popularized by action stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris and Bruce Willis. Stallone starred in 1982's First Blood about a returning Vietnam War veteran fighting a small town sheriff, as well as its sequels Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III. Previously seen as a taboo in the 1970s, Vietnam War flicks like Oliver Stone's Platoon and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket made the conflict a popular subject in the 1980s. Norris starred in the Missing in Action trilogy (1984, 1985, 1988) about a Vietnam veteran going back to rescue POWs. Schwarzenegger built an iconic career out of action classics such as The Terminator (1984), Commando (1985) and Predator (1987). The 1988 film Die Hard was particularly influential on the development of the genre in the subsequent decade. In the film, Willis plays a New York City police detective who inadvertently becomes embroiled in a terrorist take-over of a Los Angeles office building. Meanwhile, Hong Kong action cinema was being revolutionized by filmmakers Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark and John Woo; garnering increased attention all over the world with the likes of Project A (1983), Police Story (1985), A Better Tomorrow (1986) and The Killer (1989). Which featured increasingly complex martial arts and gunfight choreography with generally unsafe and most often uninsured stunt work. Tango & Cash, an action-comedy starring Stallone and Kurt Russell, was one of the two last Hollywood films to be released in the 1980s. Animation: In the 1970s, full-length animated films usually focused on adult fare due to the influence of Ralph Bakshi films. However, even though they didn't become popular until the late-1990s and 2000s due to public preference of TV animation, some well-known films were made during the 1980s, especially with Don Bluth. After he left Disney in 1979, Bluth formed his first animation studio and produced the moderately-successful The Secret of NIMH (1982). Bluth later teamed up with Steven Spielberg to produce An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988) which both became box-office successes, and proved there was still confidence in animation for theaters. After breaking up with Spielberg, Bluth independently produced All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989). Meanwhile, the Disney studio was having horrible times and the box-office failure of The Black Cauldron (1985) almost put the studio in jeopardy. However, in later years, the modest success of The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and their collaboration with Spielberg on the live-action/animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) directed by Robert Zemeckis, which was a critical and box office hit, gave Disney enough confidence in its feature animation division. A year later in the very last month of the 1980s, Ron Clements and John Musker directed The Little Mermaid (1989), which eventually started an era known as the Disney Renaissance. Inspired by the success of 1979's The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, Looney Tunes compilation films continued with The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981), Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982), Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island (1983) and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988). That decade also saw a brief resurgence of popular-toys-based films. Nelvana's The Care Bears Movie (1985) was successful enough to warrant two sequels: Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (1986) and The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland (1987).